Chapter 8 - Ten Practical Steps To Turn Your Workforce Into Your Salesforce

In this chapter, I’m going to share with you the exact ten-step process I take companies through when developing their staff to think and act like business owners who make customers want to buy, buy again, and then go on to tell their friends and family to buy!

If you are sitting at your desk on a Monday morning and thinking, “I’d like to bring business-owner-thinking to my company, but how do I do it?”, here is the answer:

Step 1: Decide on, and commit to, a programme of change
Step 2: Communicate your vision to your employees
Step 3: Categorize your staff into three groups
Step 4: Identify your first trial group
Step 5: Meet with your trial group and explain why they have been selected
Step 6: Deliver the training to the trial group
Step 7: Roll out the training with the help of your newly trained staff from the trial group
Step 8: Repeat the training for the rest of the company
Step 9: Liberate the wrong people
Step 10: Create a training leader

In the Appendices at the back of this book, you will find plenty of training materials, content, tips and suggestions to create your own in-house training course. But before you get to these, let’s take a closer look at the ten step framework which you can follow to bring business-owner-thinking to your employees.

Step 1: Decide on and commit to a programme of change

The first step is for YOU to make a decision that developing your people to think, act, and make decisions like business owners is something you are committed to. You must be 100% dedicated to training and developing your staff and raising their performance from regular employees into high performing leaders who are energized, alive and connected with your customers.

Only when your staff operate at the highest level will they truly engage with your customers, and make them want to repeat buy from you, and then do your marketing for you.

Step 2: Communicate your vision to your employees

Once you’ve made that personal commitment, you need to communicate this throughout your entire organization. You may want to begin with one division, department or team as a test bed, but wherever you start, you must share your vision with your employees and get them onboard. You need to get your people excited, committed, and energised about the training they will soon undertake, and the benefits they will receive for themselves.

My recommended approach to communicate this is to record an audio or video interview with you, the business leader, or the chief executive.

In it you can capture your aspirations and goals for your company (department or team). Often, only you know what is in your mind and what you want to achieve as an organisation. Frequently, this is not clearly communicated to the employees who will make your vision happen.

From the many conversations I have had with CEOs or MDs, many times I’m sure I end up knowing more about the ambition and vision of the company than their own employees do! That is simply because the CEO or senior management team does not clearly communicate its goals and vision to its workforce.

How can front-line employees transfer your vision and the purpose of your company to your customers if they don’t understand it in the first instance?

I recently rang up a FTSE 250 Company, asking to speak to the chief executive.

This is a large organization employing hundreds — possibly a thousand plus — employees. I had called the central number, which is on their web site, and when I asked for the chief executive by his name, the person answering the phone said, “I’m sorry, we haven’t got anybody who works here with that name.”

I find it astounding that somebody on the front-line answering the telephone, firstly, doesn’t know who the chief executive is, and secondly, cannot understand the very purpose and essence of the company if they don’t even know who the CEO is.

How could that person be true to the values and the brand of the company, which the chief executive has spent so much time, energy and money developing?

It is essential to communicate regularly and candidly with your employees.

You should remind your staff of your company’s journey over the past few years and make sure they clearly understand where you plan to take it in the next few years.

Recording an interview with you is the perfect opportunity for you to clearly and informally state the goals of your company, and to get them out deep and wide to every employee within your organization.

That interview will be recorded, saved either as a MP3 or as a video, and will be made available to everyone in your company (through a podcast, or videocast) as a reference point for your employees to unify around.

Step 3: Categorize your staff into three groups

Step number three is for you to look at your staff and divide them into three groups. If you are in a large organisation you may want to start by selecting a small division or individual department where you know each person personally.

One way to do this is to get an organisation chart, and three different coloured highlighter pens: yellow, green and red for example. You need to be honest here, and think about the three different types of people in your company.

Green: Employees like Paolo the Barber who are already high-performing and have the right attitude to grow your business. These will become your lieutenants in rolling out the training and new way of thinking to the rest of your company.

Red: Employees like the Barman who have the wrong attitude, and are a barrier to your company’s success.

Yellow: The Middlemen who neither over or under-perform, but with the right training and development could really drive your company forward.

Highlight on your organisation chart (or write down on a piece of paper) the names of the people you want to focus on. There are no fixed percentages here to split the groups by, but be honest with yourself and be clear who you feel is already a high-performer and could become a role model for your other team members.

Be clear who is poorly performing and possibly are the wrong people to take your company forward.

Those that are left in the middle will be good employees, who lack sparkle and energy but with some extra training and development could really make your company fly.

Step 4: Identify your first trial group

Now you’ve divided up your company (or department) into three groups, you need to select a trial group from the high performers. The group should be relatively small, perhaps 10 or 20 people (possibly 100+ people if you are a larger company).

This initial group will become role models, and examples for others to follow.

There are two clear ways of selecting employees to be part of your trial group,

1. You choose them based on their own talents.

2. You email your group of high-peforming staff and ask them to volunteer to be part of a new training and development programme.

Whichever way you select your trial group, it is important to choose the people who already embody that high-achieving spirit, and who will achieve even greater results if they are given additional training, focus and direction.

This group will naturally embrace the new training they will soon receive, and will demonstrate to others in your company the results that can be achieved with the right development.

If you’d chosen Middlemen, or people like the Barman for the trial group, it’s unlikely they would embrace the training with the same vigour and enthusiasm, and possibly would be cynical about it. If this was the case, they would be poor role models and mentors for other employees wanting to do the same training.

You must make sure that the people you select in the trial group represent a cross-section of the high-achieving and forward thinking employees in your company, and are not just your direct reports in management.

Step 5: Meet your trial group and explain why they have been selected

Once you have identified and selected your trial group, you need to meet with them. This can be done face-to-face or on the phone.

I personally believe that you should get everyone together face-to-face, and talk to them as one group. Here you can explain why they have been selected (as high-performing talented members of your company), and the importance of the training that they are about to go through, and their responsibilities as mentors to the later employees who will go through the training.

Step 6: Deliver the training to the trial group

Once you have got the buy-in and commitment from your initial trial group, you need to deliver the actual training. In Appendix A and B I’ll share with you the exact format of the programme I take clients through.

The success of any training programme is a mix of informative, practical content, and engaging delivery. In this book I give you the content, but it is the delivery mechanism which is the key to learning and achieving results.

In your company, you may choose to use the ideas in this book and create your own in-house training programme. This could take the form of classroom training, telephone or face-to-face coaching, e-learning, mastermind learning groups, or whatever suits you.

I believe learning and adopting a new way of thinking (business-owner-thinking) is a bit like learning a new language, and I personally feel that small changes, made on a regular basis deliver massive results.

Therefore my own preferred teaching technique is to provide employees with a MP3 player with a structured learning programme pre-loaded on it. This mean the programme can be studied little and often (around 15 minutes a day), wherever the employee is, and whenever they have a few minutes to spare. This is one of the most cost effective and time efficient way to train large numbers of employees.

Step 7: Roll out the training, now with the help of your newly trained staff

Once your initial trial group have completed their training, they are now ready to become mentors and role models for a second group of employees.

This next group of trainees should consist of more high-performers in your company: people who have the right attitude and who you know you can trust to become additional role models for the rest of your company.

Again, this group size could be 10, 20, 30, 100 or more. Here you should simply repeat steps 5 and 6 until all your high performing talented staff (whom you originally marked with a green highlighter pen) have gone through the training programme.

Step 8: Repeat the training for the rest of the company

Now you have your high performers trained and performing at a higher level still, you need to roll the training out to the next group of employees — the Middlemen who currently neither under or over perform.

You now have the advantage of using the original high-performing staff as mentors and role models, so that the ‘more challenging’ Middlemen can see what is possible, and they have people they can talk to.

Step 9: Liberate the wrong people

You need to give serious attention to the remaining staff that you originally marked as red on your organisation chart. These include people like the Barman.

Certainly, some of these people may improve their performance and attitude with training, coaching and mentoring, but some will not. It is those who will not change that you need to consider liberating from your organisation and setting them free.

It was Jim Collins a famous US management writer who said “you have to get the right people on the bus in the right seats, and get the wrong people off the bus.”

If you have people in your company who are not happy at work, and whose performance you are not happy with, it is very likely that your paying customers are also unhappy when dealing with them.

This group of employees are undoubtedly damaging the reputation of your company, and give your customers no reason to keep buying from you, or recommend you.

In the long run, the right thing to do is to liberate these employees and help them move on so they can play to their strengths and passions somewhere else. This could either be to a different part of your organisation, or to a new organisation.

I have experienced this ‘liberation’ several times in my own career. Firstly, when I was an accountant years ago, I knew my future was not in the industry so I made the change and liberated myself.

I’ve also experienced it twice in the software industry when I wasn’t enjoying my work, wasn’t passionate about it, and didn’t believe in the company. In these instances, somebody else liberated me!

If an employee’s heart and soul is not in your company, then all the training and all the personal development you give them will rarely achieve anything.

Not long ago, I was speaking to a friend who is a manager of a team of about twenty people. He told me about one of his team who he knows is bright, and intelligent, but is unmotivated and lacks drive.

My friend gave this person extra mentorship, training and invested substantially in him, but after all this, the employee turned around to him and said, “You know what, I really don’t think I’m in the right job. My heart really isn’t in it. This isn’t what I want to be doing.”

It’s important that you are aware of this, and consider before investing in staff that they are fundamentally the right people to take your company forward. You will most likely have employees in your company who are a ‘hiring mistake’, or have lost interest over time and are ready to move on.

This is an opportunity to identify them, and make their liberation part of the overall programme of change.

Step 10: Create a training leader

To keep business-owner-thinking alive in your company, I encourage clients to choose at least one person who can become a designated leader to champion these ideas.

This is somebody who fully epitomizes everything that we’ve spoken about.

This is not a position of power or a title, but a role for somebody who has the right mindset, attitude and ambition to change things, and who wants to make a difference and to set new standards.

The leader should only hold the position for six months, at which point a new person should be appointed and made responsible for keeping the spirit and energy of business-owner-thinking alive.